As I have whined interminably about, I am in the midst of a long, boring and exhausting project from which death would be a welcome release.\u00a0 But today I unexpectedly discovered that I have a two-day respite from this miserable existence.\u00a0 I have Friday and Saturday off.\u00a0 And just like that my heart is full of joy.\u00a0 I can sleep in tomorrow morning, maybe as late as 6:30 a.m.!\u00a0 \u201cI\u2019m as light as a feather! I\u2019m as happy as an angel! I\u2019m as merry as a schoolboy! I\u2019m as giddy as a drunken man!\u201d<\/p>\n
Seriously, when some onerous burden is unexpectedly lifted off your shoulders, even if only for a little while, it changes your attitude.\u00a0 Because now the thing that you had seen as impossibly hard has been cut into a smaller piece.\u00a0 It can never now be what it was.\u00a0 It is diminished.\u00a0 Even if the diminution is minor, the psychological effect is great.<\/p>\n
I will spend tomorrow weighing some decisions that I need to make.\u00a0 I have a lot of factors and unknowns that need to be considered and somehow weighed against each other.\u00a0 I have to perform the hardest of all tasks; think intelligently.<\/p>\n
But all that is okay.\u00a0 This two day carve out of time is a perfect interval to look carefully at the problem and make some kind of decision.\u00a0 Maybe it won\u2019t be definitive but at the very least I\u2019ll be able to define the time parameters needed to answer all the questions.\u00a0 And to me that is an important milestone in any project.<\/p>\n
I was watching a YouTube video from someone who argued that human colonization of other planets was highly improbably and interstellar colonization was completely impossible.\u00a0 For interplanetary human travel he pointed to the health problems associated with extended time in freefall and the damage to human health from radiation that permeates the environment beyond the Earth\u2019s atmosphere and magnetic field.\u00a0 In addition to these problems, for the case of interstellar travel, he pointed to the issues that a twenty-thousand-year multi-generational space ship would create for the humans within.\u00a0 First off, he reiterated that all health issues would be magnified by several orders of magnitude over such an enormous length of time.\u00a0 But he also stressed that a flight of that duration would see a genetic selection among the crew for individuals with anti-social or even psychopathic tendencies.\u00a0 He predicted that well before arrival, the crew would have sunk into barbarism and cannibalism.\u00a0 Now that\u2019s a scenario I can stand behind!<\/p>\n
Anyway, it was very interesting, if a little bit depressing.\u00a0 One thing I learned is that mammals brought onto the International Space Station to test the effects of microgravity on reproduction had a 100% rate of birth defects due to developmental anomalies caused by the lack of gravity.\u00a0 Well, all this negativity sure puts a damper on a lot of my favorite science fiction stories from the golden age of science fiction.\u00a0 Where does that leave \u201cRed Planet,\u201d \u201cFarmer in the Sky\u201d and \u201cThe Rolling Stones?\u201d\u00a0 Well, maybe we can find a workaround.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As I have whined interminably about, I am in the midst of a long, boring and exhausting project from which death would be a welcome<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3366,1263,3545],"tags":[4862,666],"class_list":["post-35038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-in-dunwich","category-stuff-that-personally-interests-me-miscellaneous","category-science","tag-space-exploration","tag-unbridled-enthusiasm"],"yoast_head":"\n